SC-200 Manage a security operations environment Practice Question
This SC-200 practice question tests your understanding of manage a security operations environment. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
Your Microsoft Sentinel workspace is experiencing high ingestion costs. Which of the following actions will most effectively reduce costs while maintaining security visibility?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Configure Basic Logs for verbose logs like Windows events from non-critical servers.
Option B is correct because configuring Basic Logs for verbose logs (e.g., Windows Event ID 4688 from non-critical servers) reduces ingestion costs by storing them in a lower-cost tier while still retaining them for security investigations. Basic Logs are charged at a lower ingestion rate and support simple queries and search jobs, preserving visibility for incident response without the full cost of Analytics Logs.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Delete unused analytics rules to reduce log ingestion.
Why it's wrong here
Analytics rules do not directly impact ingestion costs; they only query data.
✓
Configure Basic Logs for verbose logs like Windows events from non-critical servers.
Why this is correct
Basic Logs are cheaper and suitable for high-volume logs that are rarely queried.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Disable collection of all informational logs.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling logs may reduce visibility and miss potential threats.
✗
Reduce the data retention period to 30 days.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing retention may impact compliance and forensic investigations.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates confuse reducing data retention (Option D) with reducing ingestion costs, but retention only affects storage charges, not the per-GB ingestion fee, which is the primary cost driver in Sentinel.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Basic Logs use a separate data table (e.g., WindowsEventBasic) with a lower ingestion price ($0.50/GB vs. $2.30/GB for Analytics Logs) but support only KQL queries with a 30-day retention and search jobs for deeper analysis. This tier is ideal for high-volume, low-security-signal logs like DNS debug logs or Windows Event 5156 (connection events) from non-critical servers, where full analytics indexing is unnecessary. A real-world scenario is a SOC that ingests 100 GB/day of verbose Windows security events; moving 80 GB to Basic Logs can cut ingestion costs by over 60% while still allowing ad-hoc queries during investigations.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this SC-200 question in full detail.
Manage a security operations environment — This question tests Manage a security operations environment — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Configure Basic Logs for verbose logs like Windows events from non-critical servers. — Option B is correct because configuring Basic Logs for verbose logs (e.g., Windows Event ID 4688 from non-critical servers) reduces ingestion costs by storing them in a lower-cost tier while still retaining them for security investigations. Basic Logs are charged at a lower ingestion rate and support simple queries and search jobs, preserving visibility for incident response without the full cost of Analytics Logs.
What should I do if I get this SC-200 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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